Julian Assange, key initiator of Wikileaks, has been granted bail despite
the British government’s appeal made in behalf of the Swedish
government. A British district court judge had two days before allowed
bail for the amount of $ 316,000, on the condition that Assange wear
an electronic tag, report to a police station daily, and hold a 16-hour
curfew with eight hours free from the “mansion arrest” in
the house of a wealthy journalist-club owner.

At play here could well be documents Wikileaks released that show that
US diplomats communicated with their heads in Washington that British
troops in Afghanistan are not very good at the job. Brits are angry
about this slur, especially given their long history from the start
to go “shoulder to shoulder” with Bush’s terror wars.

Also many Swedish politicians are angry after documents revealed how,
unknown to its parliament, Sweden’s military and secret services
work with NATO and offer more assistance with the CIA than is legally
decided in Sweden.

Assange wasn’t immediately released as not all the bail money
has been raised. It is difficult to get money to the defense, because
the Yankee government pressured conveyors of donations and website servers
for wikileaks homepage to end cooperation. Paypal, Visa, Mastercharge,
Assange’s own Swiss bank, and other Establishment businesses have
frozen Assange and wikileaks accounts.

Wikileaks must be supported. It is a main tool to maintain the little
freedom we have left to have the information we need, in order to make
grave decisions, like: should we go to war; should we torture people;
should we destroy nature to have greater wealth…?

Michael Moore is one of several well known cultural figures who posted
bail. This is what he wrote on his website, December 14:

“No one can plot the next Big Lie if they know that they might
be exposed. And that is the best thing that WikiLeaks has done. WikiLeaks,
God bless them, will save lives as a result of their actions. And any
of you who join me in supporting them are committing a true act of patriotism.
Period.” http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/why-im-posting-bail-money

I join in and urge readers to do the same. Just before writing
these words, I sent most of my pension savings, $10,000, for our defense
in Julian Assange’s name. You can do the same:

The British daily carrying wikileaks documents, "The Guardian",
wrote that this is a way to get money to the right people. So, I guess
I trust this.

To recall where we came into this drama let us go back to December
7 when Assange turned himself into police in London, because Sweden
had persuaded Interpol to issue an international warrant for his arrest
and extradition to Sweden.

The accusing women are: Social Democrat party organizer of Assange’s
speaking tour last August, 31 year-old Sophia Wilén; and a Social
Democrat member in the audience, Anna Ardin, a 27 year-old anti-Cuba
activist allied with US-paid so-called “dissidents” in Cuba.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail?entry_id=78430#ixzz18CcmhdO1
Ardin was, reportedly, kicked out of Cuba for subversive activities
with right-wing groups there. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Enroh_Mot/mitch-mcconnell-wikileaks_n_792186_69752269.html

Her brother purportedly worked for the Swedish Secret Service/SEPO,
which works with the CIA.

”Anna Ardin was the person who invited Julian Assange to speak
at the Stockholm meeting on August 14, hosted by the Christian Social
Democrat Brotherhood organization. An article by Israel Shamir and Paul
Bennett (“Assange Bersieged,” Counterpunch, 14 September)
noted that while Assange went to Stockholm hoping to shield WikiLeaks
from legal persecution, ‘the moment Julian sought the protection
of Swedish media law, the CIA immediately threatened to discontinue
intelligence sharing with SEPO, the Swedish Secret Service.’ It
turns out that Ardin has a brother who works in Swedish intelligence,
and who was a liaison in Washington to U.S. spy agencies. Nothing but
a strange coincidence?”
http://www.indymedia.org.au/2010/12/12/free-julian-assange-hands-off-wikileaks

I have read conflicting stories in various mass and alternative media
about which woman organized Assange’s speaking tour. As you can
read above, I write first that it was Wilén and then cite a web
stating it was Ardin. I am uncertain who played what role. Another word
of caution is about Ardin’s brother. While several alternative
blogs and webs have stated what I wrote above, that he is a SEPO man,
none have mentioned its source or his name. I have not read about this
in any mainstream medium.

What does appear to be certain is that neither woman rejected Assange
for days after their consensual coitus with him with busted condom or
no-condom sex. Regardless of what occurred between these consenting
parties, almost all mass media are reporting that Assange is wanted
in Sweden on “rape crime charges” or “sexual assault
charges”, according to AP’s December 14 bail story. (http://www.cbsnews.com/8601-202_162
7148650.html?assetTypeId=30&tag =contentBody;commentsStandAlone).
Yet further down in the story, AP reports the truth: “Assange
is wanted for questioning”, contrary to its lead sentence.

Before they complained to the police, they had boasted on tweet and
over sms texts about their escapades. Ardin, who hosted a party in Assange’s
honor at her flat after his “crime” the night before, tweeted
her followers that she was with the “world’s coolest smartest
people, it’s amazing!” They saw Assange over a two or three
day period before they went to police, they said at first to seek assistance
to speak with Assange and ask him for a sexual disease test. Why they
had not spoken with him personally is not clear. After Ardin decided,
or was persuaded by powerful people, to go to the police, she tried,
unsuccessfully, to get her tweety expressions of blushing admiration
for Julian Assange erased. (See above cited stories in the San Francisco
Chronicle and the Herald Sun in Australia).

It is certainly a strong possibility that her secret service brother—if
he is that—got to her between her sexual conquest of an exciting,
viral cult figure and her trip to the police station, all to help out
big daddy across the Atlantic.
The supposed charges against Julian Assange are ludicrous and make a
mockery of the serious crime of rape—a crime of violence. But
they are also logical.

The United States portrays itself as the world’s leading
land of freedom and democracy. It says it is appalled by China and Iran,
and other countries that censor the Internet, and strongly supports
the Nobel Peace Prize just given to a Chinese dissident.

How is it then that the “freedom-loving land of opportunity”,
with a constitutional lawyer Uncle Tom as its titular president, must
stop this freedom of information worker and the information organization
he helped found? Assange has not even “stolen” one document.
He is only a distributor of “stolen” documents, interchanges
between diplomats and their government heads—all of whom are war
criminals and should be tried before the International Court of Hague
for war crimes against many people—currently primarily Iraqis,
Afghans, Pakistanis, Palestinians.

Four decades ago when Nixon tried to incarcerate Daniel Ellsberg, who
actually stole and leaked secret documents about the US war against
Vietnam—the Pentagon Papers—most of society and even the
Supreme Court balked. Ellsberg was not jailed and the New York Times
printed the damaging documents. And the anti-war movement grew in numbers
and strength to the chagrin of the warring/lying president.

Today, we live in another world far less democratic and less solidarity
than then. Today, much of the population of the US and its capitalist
country allies, such as Denmark where I live, support the Empire or
are passive no matter what it does. The previous Emperor even admits
in a book, he allegedly wrote, that he ordered torturing people and
is proud of it. Half the Danish population thinks that is OK; the other
half do nothing. And even more USamericans agree that wikileaks is against
their interests despite the fact that 400,000+ documents Wikileaks acquired
and published show the cruelties and lies committed by the US and its
warring coalition against the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan
and Palestine. No Western masses have been drawn to fight those illegal,
tortuous wars, and Wikileaks was left to continue “subverting”.
The consumer public did not care. A famous voice for freedom of information,
Edward R. Murrow, said long ago: “No one can terrorize a whole
nation, unless we are all his accomplices.” http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/edward_r_murrow.html#ixzz18896gEn7

Releasing government secret documents became “old hat”
by the time the first of 251,287 documents from 274 embassies, consulates
and diplomatic missions were released—or so the mass media tried
to depict them. Even the progressive image satire program The Daily
Show took this view and sketched wikileaks as banal, “nothing
new” as though once the worst crimes imaginable are no longer
unknown the crimes become acceptable. This propaganda also affected
many leftists, including many who fight against capitalism and imperialism.

But suddenly the US government becomes nervous. This happened
because the few hundred documents released show how cynical, arrogant
and condescending US government leaders and diplomats are. The cables
(“cablegate”) show the extent of US spying on its friends
and allies and on the UN; how it ignores corruption and real human rights
abuse of its client states; backroom deals with allegedly “neutral”
states; lobbying for US corporations profit interests; and they reveal
how other government heads connive and lie, and seek to tumble other
governments.

The Empire’s credibility throughout the capitalist world is shattered.
It can’t be trusted to keep its own secrets. Diplomats and military
officials from several allied countries have recently cancelled meetings
with US counterparts. The Empire is falling, so the Empire goes amok.

Information freedom fighters and their key leader must be crushed.
Government terrorists, such as Homeland Security chairman Senator Joe
Liberman, an outspoken Zionist, are cracking down on any associate of
or link to wikileaks. Amazon turned down wikileaks as its server, then
Pal Pal, Visa, Mastercharge refused to channel donations to the organization.
Many other media and businesses refuse to do business with the information
freedom fighters. A Swiss bank froze Assange accounts, much of it designated
for his defense. Organizations and businesses in many countries forbid
their members or employees from reading or supporting in any way wikileaks.
I know an IT expert in Denmark who works for a company that forbids
its employees from even looking at wikileaks documents or speaking in
its support.

According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, two-thirds of US citizens
want Assange brought before a US court on espionage crimes. Yet of scores
of stories I have read in the mass media there is no concern about the
truth divulged in these incriminating documents. http://cubaldirect.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/121510-granma-habana-reflexiones-del-companero-fidel-el-imperio-en/

US military services have issued orders that no personnel may possess
mobile communication apparatuses that could be used to record or photograph
anything that could be embarrassing, such as occurred in Iraqi torture
chambers. Furthermore, personnel are forbidden to read any websites
or newspapers, such the New York Times, which has posted any documents
released by wikileaks.

The US is seeking to make a new law especially against Assange and
Wikileaks, a modern Espionage Act from 1917 that forbad US government
employees from revealing secret documents. No matter that Assange is
an Australian citizen and has not taken any documents from the US. The
US wants to create a new criminal: “information terrorists”.

Republican party presidential candidate Sarah Palin calls for Assange
to be “hunted down like Osama bin Laden”—albeit that,
in reality, the US government does not want to capture him. Remember
that even the US Senate revealed that the former War Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld let bin Laden live in safety in some Afghanistan mountain-tunnel
and turned a US troop detachment away from engaging him. But with the
leading “information terrorist” it is another matter.

Another Republican presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, also calls
for his execution. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27008.htm
.
So do some Fox News commentators and many other prominent opinion makers
and top level politicians. The President for “hope and change”
agrees and is backing a law to try Assange in the US for espionage,
and another law which would allow the extra-juridical murder of American
citizens in foreign countries.

The United States pretends to be appalled by China and Iran censorship,
and other countries that censor the Internet, and strongly supports
the Nobel Peace Prize just given to a Chinese dissident. But no more
wikileaks.

Thanks to the Pirate Party of Switzerland, wikileaks can be read
on its site http://www.wikileaks.ch/ . Donations for its defense can
also be made through them.

And there are hundreds of other sites that carry wikileaks documents.
Interestingly enough while there have been no grass roots public support
for Assange-wikileaks in Denmark, one of the capitalist dailies, the
liberal “Politiken”, has placed wikileaks released documents
on its website. http://79.125.3.236/cablegate/.

In a December 9 editorial, chief editor Tøger Seidenfaden wrote:
"Politiken" stands in “solidarity with Wikileaks and
in defense of global information freedom. If the pressure [against freedom
of information] continues we must find other and more extensive means
of resistance.”

The Bolivian government became the first government (and the only of
which I am aware) to support Wikileaks by placing some of its documents
on its official website documents—those pertaining to its country.
There are some 50 secret or confidential documents on: www.wikileaks.vicepresendencia.gob.bo
.

The Bolivian government has a ministry for transparency, something
the US government could learn from. But, then, if there were transparency
in US government affairs, there would be no wars, of fewer anyway, and
corporations would earn fewer profits.

Operation Payback, activist hackers from various groups and countries,
has hit back at the Empire by hacking and stopping for hours or days
several of its servile servants, including Swedish government websites.

For those still in doubt about the significance of the US Embassy documents
being released, I point to some of the revelations.

1. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered State Department
diplomats to steal personal human material information—DNA, fingerprints,
iris scans, credit card information…—from UN officials,
including from the general secretary (their own man), from other diplomats
and from human rights group leaders.

2. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (the country where bin Ladin and most
of the September 11 alleged terrorists come from) asked its friend,
the United States government, to attack Iran.

3. Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect “US interests”.

4. Brits are now angry at the US for the way its leaders privately criticize
British troops in Afghanistan.

5. Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing secretly.
Not even the Swedish parliament knew until now. And when Assange sought
residence in Sweden, the CIA threatened the government with cutting
off its intelligence cooperation. SEPO has a special reason to want
Assange out of the way.

6. The US knows that Sri Lanka’s government, under the Rajapaksa
brothers’s rule, massacred ten thousand and more Tamil civilians
in the last days of the civil war. Sri Lanka’s government can
no longer with any credibility be trusted with their lies to the contrary.

7. The US internally admits having lost control of Pakistan where it
is illegally killing civilians and doing so against the protests of
the national government.

8. It has also been revealed that the US is secretly killing “undesirable”
civilians in Yemen.

9. In Havana, the Yankee government’s interest section head Jonathan
Farrar summoned diplomats from several countries to a breakfast last
February. China, Spain, Canada, Brazil (remember the “worker president”
Lulu), Italy, France, Japan discussed with their friend, the US invaders
of Cuba, how the last remaining semi-socialist country’s economy
was doing. The conclusion was that its “financial situation could
become fatal within 2-3 years”. Apparently, China was the most
preoccupied. Its diplomat expressed “visible exasperation”
with Cuba’s lack of making economic reforms (translated to mean
capitalist market reforms). China wants joint venture partners to own
more than half the businesses, and it wants its loans repaid pronto.
(C:\Documents and Settings\Ron\Dokumenter\CABLEGATE\Cuba to Be Insolvent
CBS News.mht).

I wonder if Fidel will write a reflection about this. On December 14,
he did publish his thoughts on Assange/Wikileaks but made no mention
of the above document.
http://cubaldirect.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/121510-granma-habana-reflexiones-del-companero-fidel-el-imperio-en/

10. Lastly, I cite from a document (10 Brussels 183; header: VZCZCXRO5689,
dated February 17, 2010) that describes a meeting with Deputy National
Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs Michael Froman in
Brussels, January 27, 2010, with 25 senior EU officials, including the
current EU commissioner for climate, the Dane Connie Hedegaard. At the
time of this meeting, she was the key Danish government climate spokesperson
during the COP 15 conference in Copenhagen, December 2009.

16. (C) It is vital to get G-77 agreement to whatever grouping
we use, Hedegaard continued. Both agreed it will be important to talk
to incoming G-77 chair Yemen, with Froman adding it will also be important
to be in close touch with Mexico as COP-16 chair. In fact, Froman added,
we need all major groups ) the EU, MEF, BASIC, G-77, the island countries
) to agree to a negotiating mechanism. Hedegaard responded that we will
need to work around unhelpful countries such as Venezuela or Bolivia.
Froman agreed that we will need to neutralize, co-opt or marginalize
these and others such as Nicaragua, Cuba, Ecuador. Hedegaard noted the
irony that the EU is a big donor to these countries, while Cuba, for
example, is actively discouraging others from signing on to the Accord.

Until a decade or so ago, Danes had been internationally considered
a peaceful, tolerant people. But in recent years, they have become a
key supporting force for US-NATO wars against Yugoslavia and in the
Middle East. Hedegaard cultivated an image of being tolerant and working
in the interests of the environment but this document shows her and
the Danish government’s true colors. When this document was recently
revealed, she was forced to call a press conference midst in the COP
16 Cancun climate conference where she skirted what she had said last
January:

As a media advisor for the Bolivian embassy in Denmark, I attended
COP15, in December 2009, and worked with President Evo Morales there.
The Bolivian delegation was insulted, as were other “third world”
countries which rejected the “Copenhagen Accord”, by the
whimsical manner in which the Danish government treated them. Soon after
the COP 15 fiasco, the US announced that it was cutting out the crumbs—development
aid—it extends to Bolivia and Ecuador, another ALBA (Bolivarian
Alliance of the Peoples of America) bad boy. And US-Denmark/EU pressure
on the COP 16 climate conference process resulted in Bolivia standing
alone for the life of the Planet.

Conclusion

“The Internationalist” publication in Australia recently
wrote about the condomgate:

“Criminal cases involving sex are notoriously difficult and messy
(often no witnesses, complex relations between the individuals). However,
in this case it is evident that there was no violence or coercion. None
has been alleged, and whatever [the two women] may have felt afterwards,
indications are the sex was consensual at the time. Add to this the
judicial mishandling of the case: immediately leaking it to the press,
switching prosecutors in order to reinstate the investigation, refusing
to meet with Assange then demanding his extradition. Throw in a connection
with intelligence agencies, and Cold War anti-Communist connections
via Swedish social democracy, plus the overriding determination of the
U.S. Empire to strike back at, and shut down, WikiLeaks.”
http://www.indymedia.org.au/2010/12/12/free-julian-assange-hands-off-wikileaks
.

The United States Government, its capitalist economic structural
base (and its capitalist allies) is Organized Sickness!

Dave Lindorff, an old friend and colleague from the 1970s Los Angeles
Vanguard, wrote, in broad terms (www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/333)
that Assange-wikileaks is a precedent case for the Empire, which it
seeks in order to fend off provable accusations that it is the Empire
itself that is the primary and initiating terrorist. So the Empire must
create a new category of terrorism, that of “information terrorists”.
Julian Assange is today’s Daniel Ellsberg and Phil Agee. And we
mustn’t forget the brave young US soldier, Bradley Manning, who,
perhaps, leaked military secrets to wikileaks, which show, among other
important crimes, that the US murders and tortures far more people than
we already knew about. He will certainly be imprisoned for a long time
for his bravery in the fight for peace and for real democracy—an
open political process in which we all actually participate in making
decisions that actually get carried out for the benefit of the human
race and the planet (Pachamama).

So, we who disseminate vital information kept secret from a public
that must be informed are also “information terrorists”,
who aid and abet “terrorism”. And that is so, so the Establishment
means, because we do not aid and abet the Empire’s terrorism!

This is not just another issue. This is a frontal attack
against all who wish a decent world. Uproar!

If they succeed in putting Assange in their dungeons or crucifying
him as a modern non-violent Spartacus, then goodbye to even pretenses
of freedom of speech and the right to know. As Lindorff wrote, the US
could “easily trump up a ‘crime’ and arrest a print
publisher or radio network owner. These actions are not the actions
of a democracy. They are the lawless actions of a dictatorship.”

From one “information terrorist” to an information-seeking
potential terrorist public, I close with Edward R. Murrow’s adieu: